(1948- ) UK author, a former accountant, whose sf debut is the Demi-Monde tetralogy comprising The Demi-Monde: Winter (2011), The Demi-Monde: Spring (2012), The Demi-Monde: Summer (2013) and The Demi-Monde: Fall (2013). The Demi-Monde is a highly detailed Virtual Reality sustained by an advanced Quantum Computer and ostensibly designed as a military training ground for asymmetrical War in a City environment: compressed versions of real-world Warsaw, Berlin, Washington, London, Paris and further conurbations are jammed together, contiguous or separated only by the occasional river, with deliberate Overpopulation and other stresses (including many recreated historical psychopaths: de Sade, Robespierre, Torquemada, Empress Wu ...) to encourage perpetual conflict in this Steampunk melting-pot. An unusual aspect is that real-world visitors' Avatars must be identical to their originals rather than of arbitrary appearance; more interestingly, it is argued that as a deterministic "clockwork universe", the simulation allows (as reality does not) effective predictions of its future via Psychohistory. Beginning with a rescue operation for a real-world persona trapped in the Demi-Monde – the real world here being an Alternate History where America was almost destroyed by plague after World War Two – the engaging action-adventure narrative develops Science Fantasy ramifications with a mythic back-story and long-term plans by a race of Vampires based not in the fantastic Demi-Monde but in the real world. Rees has created an intriguing setting for his complex story. [DRL]

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We passed a couple of major milestones on 1st August: the SFE is now over 4.5 million words, of which John Clute’s own contribution has now exceeded 2 million. (For comparison, the 1993 second edition was 1.3 million words, and … Continue reading →

We’ve reached a couple of milestones recently. The SFE gallery of book covers now has more than 10,000 images: this one seemed appropriate for the 10,000th. Our series of slideshows of thematically linked covers has continued to grow, and Darren Nash of … Continue reading →

We’ve been talking for a while about new features to add to the SFE, and another one has gone live today: the Gallery, which collects together covers for sf books and links them back to SFE entries. To quote from … Continue reading →